Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Joel Shepherd's "Sasha," the movie

One giant plus for any movie made of Sasha, is that unlike my previous ‘Cassandra Kresnov Series’, Sasha would be relatively cheap to film. Yes there are some quite big battle scenes at the end, but most of the story is character driven rather than action driven, so aside from the costs of shooting in some very pretty, wild terrain (New Zealand? Canada?), I can’t see any prohibitive expenses. There’s also no magic or dragons or other giant, flame spewing monsters, so special effects would barely be needed (and wouldn’t that be just wonderful, to see some character based fantasy that didn’t just rely on eye candy?).

Since characters drive the plot, by far the most important part of the film would be casting. And for my main character Sasha, I have exactly the same problem I had with the Cassandra Kresnov Series -- there’s very few actresses in Hollywood who have established themselves playing tough female roles. There are probably quite a few who could do it, but haven’t been given the opportunity. But I don’t know who they are.

As a character, Sasha is something of a force of nature. She was born a Princess, daughter of the King of Lenayin, and was a very wild kid. In any other circumstance she might have had it beaten out of her, but Lenayin loves individualists and Sasha’s older brother, Prince Kristoff, was a little wild himself and encouraged her, perhaps unwisely. But Kristoff was killed when Sasha was eight, Sasha was heartbroken, and went to live with Kristoff’s old mentor Kessligh, greatest warrior in Lenayin , to take Kristoff’s place as his student.

Any actress playing Sasha would have to get into the shape of her life, think...[read on]